Page:VCH Norfolk 1.djvu/386

 A HISTORY OF NORFOLK ments and their funeral customs. More than one able paper by Grimm, by Kemble and by Wylie, has arrayed the classical authorities before us, and also shown cremation to have been largely practised in some parts of Europe during the early Middle Ages. But English antiquaries at least have been perforce content to recognize cremation in vaguely defined districts of the north and east of England ; and their general statements have been justified from time to time by excavation and research. All are agreed that in East Anglia cremation was the rule, and it is here that the connection between the Anglian folk and urn-burial receives its fullest confirmation. All the available material goes to show that for a certain period the population east of the Fens for the most part burnt their dead ; and though the name of England were proof enough, com- parison with burial places north of the Humber and in the early Mercian kingdom shows that the Angles constituted the bulk of the population in these parts, and were not a small ruling class to which we might otherwise assign the extended burials that do undoubtedly occur in Norfolk and elsewhere. These are the exceptions to the general rule obtaining in East Anglia, and though they need some explanation there is no doubt that Anglian cremation is one of the ascertained facts in English archaeology. It is a commonplace perhaps not fully appreciated that ' Teutonic cremation is generally wanting in the interest and information which attends the burial of the body entire.' The weapons of the dead, their ornaments and objects of domestic life, were all but consumed in the funeral pyre, and archeology is here denied the help that is afforded by relics found with skeletons in the protecting bosom of the earth. Local variations apart, there seems sufficient evidence for the generally accepted view that in England during the Anglo-Saxon period cremation was the earlier practice and gradually gave way to the Christian rite as the Gospel spread among the Teutonic conquerors of the island. This sequence however does not necessarily imply that all who were laid in the grave unburnt had been converted to the Christian faith, for certain Teutonic graves on the continent which have the Christian orientation are con- sidered undoubtedly heathen, and so far prove that the direction of the interments is not always a fair test of the religious convictions of the interred, however just the inference as to date. To illustrate cremation in Norfolk it is natural to turn to those districts of north Germany from which the Angles and kindred tribes are commonly supposed to have set out to occupy south Britain. And in this connection some valuable evidence was obtained by Kemble and distinguished German archasologists who conducted extensive explora- tions on Luneburg Heath and the banks of the Elbe. In a well-known article on burial and cremation ^ the author of the Saxons in England states that urns of precisely similar form, and with exactly the same peculiar- ities as those found in this country, have been discovered in Jutland and parts of Friesland, on the borders of the Elbe and Weser, and in other 1 "Journal of Archaokgtcal Institute, vol. xii. 326